Lasers and the light show

I heard today that Techshop Portland has now received their laser cutter – woo-hoo! It’ll probably be another week or two before they have the first SBU (Safety and Basic Use) class, which I’ll need to take to get access to it… but it’s in sight, and that has me very excited.

One of the reasons I’m so excited: pictured here, a tower of acrylic bracelets that are part of some really special jewelry sets I’ll be unveiling very soon. They just got here today, after being shipped out by Ponoko more than three weeks ago. It’s not Ponoko’s fault at all – my shipment was held up in US customs. Not really sure what was so threatening about a handful of sheets of plastic cut into little pieces, but apparently it warranted a thorough inspection (in which they also managed to remove and/or lose a handful of those pieces.)

I love Ponoko… they’re a great company, they provide an awesomely personalized level of service, and without them I wouldn’t be doing or making what I am right now. Even once I have access to the Techshop laser cutter, I know that I’ll still use them for some services (like metal cutting).  However, all that said, it’s going to be incredibly nice to be able to shorten my turn around time and my design/revise cycle so drastically, not to have to worry about things like shipments getting held up at the border, and to be able to bring in all sorts of other materials that I wasn’t able to source with Ponoko – like recycled materials!

It’s going to be another couple of days before the items from today’s arrival hit the shop – I have to polish and assemble and photograph and the like. But before I do that, I’m off to work on the project that I already had slated for this evening. It’s time for some LEDs to be introduced to some fabric!